Tournaments will be held in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Boston, with the winners of each city going to finals in New York. San Francisco's chance at playing will be on February 23 at 1015 Folsom, starting at 2 PM. The first 256 people at the door will get a chance to play, along with $10 Best Buy cards. While that's a lot of people to battle, the prizes are very sweet. According to Nintendo:

The grand prize winner will receive a crystal-coated Wii with a design from Super Smash Bros. Brawl, a home theater system from Best Buy and a copy of the game. The second-place finisher will receive one Wii system and Wii Remote, one copy of Super Smash Bros. Brawl and a $1,000 Best Buy gift card. The third-place finisher will receive a Wii and Wii Remote, a copy of the game and a $500 Best Buy gift card. The fourth-place finisher will receive a Wii, an extra Wii Remote, a copy of the game and a $250 Best Buy gift card.

Today's goes to Dede. Why? Because we're in a "faggy" mood, that's why. Look, whatever sins she committed against poor little Sean were swept under the rug after bearing witness to last year's inspiring Vivienne Westwood exhibition at the deYoung. (See, we said something nice about you. Will you pay our rent now? What about a new plasma TV? A Wii?) That said, where has she been lately?

He truly exemplifies the Japanese concept of Jinba-Ittai (人馬一体), the unity, the oneness between rider and horse.

He's not cloistered inside with the Nintendo Wii or the Guitar Hero. No, he's out there in the turning world. His simple message: "Have Fun On Bikes."

And what's wrong with that?

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According to Game Informer Online, Nintendo of America may be relocating -- and one of the rumoured destination cities is right here in San Francisco. More employment opportunities are always good, especially establsihed companies that can bring some economic stability -- not to mention fun aspects like more local video-game testing opportunities.

Of course, another rumoured option is New York. Not fair. Wii propose a video-game-off, San Francisco's best versus New York's. Winner gets Nintendo; loser has to buy a PS3 at full price-- from Best Buy.

Of course, we're still scouring the internets for any hint of game news. There's plenty of coverage all over the place, in particular GameSpot's media blitz and Joystiq's ongoing blog updates, dealing with the horrors of E3 so we don't have to. But what if you're only casually interested in videogames, and you don't care about all the lights and noise and information overload? Well, we cover the internet coverage so you don't have to. Here are our highlights:

Console Wars
Both the Sony Playstation 3 and the Nintendo Wii were fully unveiled to the public. The general consensus is that Wii won. Nintendo played up its motion-sensing remote controller, which now includes a speaker. Its first-party games such as and Super Mario Galaxy will use the remote to simulate shooting arrows, swinging swords, fishing, and hopping over boss monsters and eating mushrooms.

The PS3, on the other hand, will be extremely expensive and larger and heavier than the original Xbox. Much like the Xbox 360's release, the PS3 will come in two varieties: the outrageous $499 for a stripped down version, and the no-way-you've-got-to-be-kidding $599 for the version that people actually want. The biggest difference between the two versions is hard drive size: 20GB versus 60GB. Also notable is that the 20GB version has no HDMI output, support for other memory cards, or wireless internet.

More after the jump. Image of The Staples Center the burned-out husk of a ruined city from Metal Gear Solid 4 on Konami's website.

Nintendo gave bloggers-who-think-they're-funny a present on Thursday by announcing the new name for their upcoming Revolution console (). It's going to be called "Wii."

Seriously. With a "distinctive ii spelling" that's pronounced like "we," "wee," "oui," and "Wheee!" Early buzz has been somewhat less than favorable. In Nintendo's defense, the company was forced to come up with a distinctive name to compete with another upcoming console, the Sony Deuxdi.

Kotaku has an entry about our state assemblyman, Leland Yee, and his ongoing quest to ride the coattails of the hot-button topic of the moment keep our kids safe from Grand Theft Auto. Yee spoke with a writer for gaming site 1Up.com, defending his position as being in the best interest of kids while still preserving the free speech rights for adults. Hal Halpin of the Interactive Entertainment Merchants Association responded to the article by pointing out that the statistics Yee used while making his argument were inaccurate, and that videogame merchants do just as good a job at policing themselves as movie theaters do.

News on Redwood Shores' favorite "sweat shop", after the jump.

Image from the Dutch site Puppycursus in Zeist which we can't read but looks awesome.